


Reinvest

by RanOutofBatteries



Category: Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions
Genre: Gen, but he's self aware and he walks around knowing what the game is supposed to be like, not touya or touko, the main character is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24841273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RanOutofBatteries/pseuds/RanOutofBatteries
Summary: He avoids the characters that he's supposed to avoid, talks to the NPCs as he pleases, and then goes on his way as everything around him is eventually destroyed by the effect.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Reinvest

played pokemon and now i think this is a good time to finally start this

* * *

The first time he wakes up, he stares upward at his ceiling and pretends that the creatures aren't there. The ghost pokemon that was currently plaguing his house - Gastly, he remembers - leans over him, wickedly cackling through a phantasmal haze of purple as its teeth passed through his neck. He shivered uncontrollably and was forced to stay bedridden for several more hours as it haunted him before the sunrise returned. And then he was alone.

He stays awake and thinks nothing of it and remembers that the night doesn't hide memories, and despite not seeing the ones and zeros of a video game the world was not real.

He does not dream that occurrence because the cold still remains even when he stays under the sheets in the summer. When he looks outside and watches a Pidove preening its wings, or a Purrloin hunting for its next prey, or a large eye of a Hoothoot he sees something else entirely, animals that were not real and creatures that did not exist in the same parallel as this one.

Fish did not float, or speak, or allow people to climb atop their fins and parade off into the waters. He doesn't care to leave the house and at night once more he thinks of all of the useless problems that he wishes had not been so important to him, trivial things that he wished he'd cared more about, regrets boundless enough that he had given up on entirely.

So in the end he just makes a cup of tea. He sits down at his dining table and observes his seat upon his universe, and he closes his eyes.

And the next day he gets up. He goes outside. He ignores the greeting the mailman gives him, he goes to the nearby supermarket, he buys food ingredients for curry and places them in a bag at the checkout and goes back home to contemplate the world once again, alone and subsequently checking if his counter was made out of undecipherable material.

It took him a while longer to be able to listen to a pokemon's cry without dying internally. To him it sounded strange, birdcalls that sounded just a bit too human to be real; at least they didn't sound fake enough to be just a cry of their own names. That would have been terrible to hear every morning.

So he curdled his anger in favor of feeding the Pokemon birdseed. He went to the ocean which he found was just a half hour's walk away, the Shellos whose pink and blue and yellow coloring reminded him of the sea at sunrise where the waters turned orange in between the hours. And if one of them grew too attached and came with him back home by clinging to the back of his shirt, well, he wasn't complaining.

And from there his numbers grew at home, too: a stray Litwick who had wandered from the forest too early in the morning, a Zubat who'd slammed itself into a closed window nearby, a Dusclops that had been freed due to its off-white, discolored bandages that even its other brethren did not have.

And for the first time he looked the young creature in the eye, adjusted his posture, and attempted to look stronger than he felt.

For some of them the world was new and open to invitation. They did not need encouraging: they already had all the boundless energy they needed, bounding up the stair banisters and leaving feathers and claw marks and water trails around the house. That Dusclops, already having been abandoned once, looked at him as if it meant the world to have one more hand guide it.

He gave it time. It traveled the hallway, went upstairs to stare out the window, floated back downstairs to where the laundry room and the basement was, then came back up and looked at him once again and laid down on his bed. It remained there for a few long hours. When he came back to check on it, the Dusclops had tucked up alongside him and slept as he did.

He didn't technically own any of the pokemon and he was considering the thought of never actually catching them. They could come and go as they pleased, and some of them did; in the end, though, for some reason, they always decided to come back.

He left his windows open at night. The nocturnal animals prowled and ate from his kitchen, but that was alright too: he was willing to stay up longer hours and it was beginning to get difficult falling asleep. His thoughts plagued him even when the fire stopped burning - he did not need to lie there and start counting Wooloo even if the Dusclops did relax him with its languid, even breaths.

The other pokemon piled up whenever they got the chance - often times he woke up with a foot in his mouth, or a beak tucked away against his neck and shoulder. The Zubat had almost crushed itself trying to nest against the crook of his knee hanging upside down, and he'd turned over only to hear a wiggling noise and the sensation of tiny claws poking his leg.

And even when they made a mess and gazed up at him expectantly as if saying _clean it, it's your house,_ he sighs and smiles and does it anyway because it did feel like they came and gave him something to do so that he felt a bit less alone.

He stayed in that house that somehow managed to stay his for several more weeks while maintaining the same schedule, and then he continued on solely with the thoughts that now a few pokemon depended on him. He could provide food and shelter, if only that. And it helped him as well.

As with every encounter that had slid off of him like oil on water, the individual request did not phase his rationale. The pokemon stayed exactly as they were as he came home, anticipating the next treat he'd been saving for them. He made sweets, berry cakes, small candies and other things that he'd learned how to build. It was a fun pastime and felt a lot like the chemistry classes he'd taken before.

The cooking sessions had invited other things that were not pokemon. Parents seeking the scent of whatever he was making peeked over to check what he'd been making, and children with no sense of privacy or personal space came by to ask for food, at the horror of their respective families. He let them have it anyway. It didn't mean anything in the end.

Yet still he could not shake the feeling that he was gaining stares. From underneath bushes and behind large maple trees he could catch eyes observing him, unnervingly precise and disappearing whenever he tried to look out of the corner of his eye.

At first he thought it was a prank. But when he did catch a glimpse of who had chosen to stalk him that day all the color drained out of his face, because he knew that person.

After all, he'd seen that very same character in the main menu when starting up Pokemon.

The main character stared back at him, gaze robotic and blank and empty as it could possibly be for a child without a heart. They made eye contact. The character withdrew first, spinning around with no sign of recognition as they pivoted and headed off without a word.

He stared after the creature, heart turning infinitesimal underneath bone, knowing what he had seen and wishing that he hadn't.

He wasn't expecting it to be so hard.

Sentience wasn't a learned trait, he knew, and however easily robots could emulate human emotion it could not garner the whole entirety of it no matter how long and programmed its code was. A human would need to write it somehow, and their lives were just as complex and complicated.

The thing he'd seen only rarely showed up now, the player piloting it having no clue of how pitiable its masquerade actually was in person.

It came out on rainy days sometimes, gaze cold and unfeeling, and nobody turned to bat an eye. It frightened him how such an unnatural part of this world was integrated so finely into the rest of the universe, like orange trying to bleed into blue. It created a muddled mess, dampening his joy to be alive.

And when he fights battles on his spare time and he gains the gold automatically given to him, there is no sign of footsteps running away to head to the nearest Pokemon center. No, on the contrary: the people he battles have no given response. They stare at him even as he starts walking away back home, Pokeball in one hand and the rest strapped onto their belts as they process whatever word or phrase that managed to stump their fragile mind.

He no longer needed to be handheld.

Perhaps he didn't know how to use it anymore. He certainly abused it when given the chance, but now he didn't wait for it: he stayed with his pokemon and then trained them on his own, not through drills or practice rounds or anything strenuous but more entertaining activities, such as playing and roughhousing and catch-the-poke-toy.

Pokemon that they treated like pets and brainless tools as if they weren't far more intelligent than people credited for, throwing money and playground balls and babying voices as if that Alakazam was just as undeveloped as a human toddler, or a Herdier could be compared to an average chihuahua. Sure, anthropomorphic creatures often showed that correlating physical human characteristics meant that the more human they looked, the smarter they were, stretched a bit too far, but Zekrom and Reshiram were literal gods and they were confined to the whims of a trainer with the brain the size of a nut and an insane pokemon whisperer in desperate need of therapy.

He looked back, impassive. Things may have not changed after that, not in the way he had expected, but in some lights many things had changed - Cheren followed after him sometimes, not obvious enough to seem invasive or in pursuit but enough to just barely notice whenever he turned around and briefly saw the hind part of a shoe, or a stray strand of hair. Bianca did not notice anything out of place.

And Zekrom did not come after him, either. The world did not turn upside down or catch aflame. He was just a neighbor NPC and a nameless figure in the background of a place where nobody lived, farmers aplenty while they were presented as pixels to a screen that somebody else was watching.

"Ah."

Cheren's eyes widened. Bianca, who had looked away for just a moment and turned back to see the expression on her friend's face, also turned to look and saw the same scene he was looking at.

Rookidee looked up at him, gaze completely unlike any normal movements he'd expect of a bird of its size. There was no chirping. No pecking. There were little hops here and there whenever he leaned too close or to realign itself to any potential predators, craning its tiny head in a way reminiscent of an owl's head tilt. Its bright black eyes caught only his own faint reflection.

He raised his hand. The bird instantly raised its wings and flew back, feathers puffing up in a scare attempt. He lowered his hand.

Then he got up and walked back towards where he'd started. Incredulously, the bird also started chasing after him all the while wondering whether or not the man was trying to escape without a fight. Its ego inflated, and proudly it rose to fly after him, pecking at his back.

"That man's the one who beat Touya. I hadn't expected anyone around here to be so adept at Pokemon battling."

Cheren stopped, and shook his head. "Have you ever noticed how strange that neighbor is? He moved in a couple weeks ago, and he doesn't do anything but feed his Pokemon and lets them out to roam at night."

Bianca watched the bird fly incessantly around the man's head before settling victoriously atop his hair. "He sets them free?"

"No, that's the thing: they come back. A week is the maximum they're gone, then they saunter in again and get fed until they're full. It's like he's keeping a pet hotel. He never recalls his Pokemon, either."

"D-do you think...he's too poor to afford a Pokeball? That sounds like a big problem!"

"No, I'm sure that he's rich enough. He owns a house and he's able to feed himself, right? It can't be too hard."

They stare at him regardless until the door closes shut and they are separated from view of the Rookidee and its guileless owner, who had not noticed their presence at all since the Rookidee's arrival. Cheren turned around and moved on.

The man who'd entered the house removed the Rookidee from his head before turning the rest of his body onto the couch, lying at an imbalance. It was as if the room spun, something clicking in the back of his head like a plug meeting an electric outlet, and then it zinged through him in a thunderclap of energy that he had no trouble taking advantage of. If he strained hard enough he could hear birds chirping outside and inside, furry limbs hitting the floor, and the calls of people and Pokemon.

It had taken him awhile to find any proper ingredients at the local market. The spices were all different from the ones in the real world, and so were the fruits. Vegetables looked similar and offputting at the same time.

He found that he didn't know any of the signs on the tall posts, arrows indicating to onlookers where to head next. He couldn't read what they even said, for that matter. Another language entirely. He struggled to parse through this information. He had not been emotionally prepared to handle entering into a new world entirely, let alone have to learn a new language.

He looked about his house, taking in another moment to cautiously observe all the furniture and memorabilia scattered about the living room. A fireplace, though he had never touched one in his life. A beige-colored sofa. A mountain of books stacked on the bookshelf, though strangely they were all of similar lengths and some looked more like files than anything.

He looked past them, glanced towards the two windows with curtains billowing. The clock's minute hand kept ticking and the sun was shining in, lights dancing and flickering across the wooden floor like spots of yellow-white.

He opened the door. It clicked, then shut. He stood outside his house and saw how similar it was to the other houses, green and with flaking paint at the edges.

The first day he had woken up he had panicked, not knowing what house he'd ended up in. He'd opened the door to take one step outside before he was met face to face with a large, scary-looking Pidgeotto. He had stared at it. It was gigantic, with large black eyes and a keen caw. He continued to stare at it. He bore holes into it that burned so intense that when it finally noticed him not doing anything, it chirped nervously and flew away toward another place where it could rest.

Even the red markings on its head were the same, tail feathers yellow edged-orange with thin discrepancies between the two colors and completely pale underneath the wings. He saw it move away up above, where it conjoined with another bird whose shadow blocked out the sun and prevented him from being able to identify either of them. When he blinked, it had disappeared.

He went back inside, drew the curtains shut. He sat down and put his legs on the coffee table and stared at the spot where the windows would be, processing what he had just seen. Then he drew his knees up and fell comatose.

The save systems in the video games were to make the player think they had some sort of control in this otherwise plot-driven world, where every match was pre-destined for a win and with set levels and moves and pokemon that never changed, never rotated, never had new surprising movesets each round.

He still hears the birds and this time he can almost see their mechanical cogs and bolts and wiring underneath their feathered bodies, lines of code and numbers instead of what he perceived them as. He could probably see his own hands as numbers if he ever decided to look down.

The neighbors are getting louder; at least, their kids were. Normally he didn't have the time or patience to deal with it but he was beginning to feel as if something was about to change. Even the Pokemon could feel his uneasy atmosphere and were on-edge.

The player has probably never heard of the idea of just not fighting ingame. Unlike someone who was trying to get them to release all Pokemon (if he were ever to meet someone like that), this child chose to one-up this idea by fighting completely on every occasion. He was playing the game, and the whole point of it was to battle. Whether or not he cared about ideals he wouldn't ever translate it into the game, because he would never be able to progress without it.

But the idea was incredible, not because of the validity of it but the fact that Touya had never really questioned his own choices. He would not stop fighting just because some NPC with flavor text told him not to. He had already retrieved his Pokemon and he would travel the world with it, because he wanted to experience more than just the outward areas of his home.

But it would give him something to think about.

Humans were naturally weaker than their Pokemon. Their intelligence was put into their strategy, and forwarding this to their Pokemon's moves and defenses put them in harmonious balance. Would NPCs sacrifice their own lives for their Pokemon if it ever came to that situation? Yes, most likely. But the game did not allow for that situation to ever occur, since Pokemon only fainted after battles and never died or had serious consequences.

Humans did not have the fighting skills to shoot poison barbs, or ice, or create vines to tangle his opponent. He would more likely die by himself if he were to not use a Pokemon. The only reason he'd managed to fight on his own was because level 5-10 pokemon were weak. He just had to tackle them down.

He would also not have expected that because he didn't have Pokemon he would not be able to travel outside the confines of the town. Or maybe it was because the game limited everybody because the player character hadn't opened up the option either. Now that Touya had a Pokemon he should be able to leave.

The man looked down at the Pokemon in his living room. They gazed back at him.

"I'm leaving," he said.

They follow after him as he gathers his belongings, and turns off the television, and reaches for the door. A paw lands on his shoe and a bandage trails over his shoulder and wings beat furiously into his vision, and then he is startled as one immediately jumps onto an empty Pokeball that he's never used before in his life. It only dings once in confirmation before settling back on his belt.

The rest turn to follow, squabbling to reach one first. Rookidee hits the next one, then Dusclops, then Zubat, then Shellos. And then the final one left standing is the Pokemon who hadn't moved an inch since they started.

The Ninetales gazes into his eyes before turning to leave the kitchen. As he turns to go, four paws pad quickly after his steps and it drops the key into his waiting hand. He begins to grin, not from relief but from the expectation of whatever was to come. They were ready now.

And he began his trail off into the forest.

And then his pokemon defeat his opponent's. The first child filled it to two spaces as all non-players normally did, and especially without an exp. share it was difficult to get all of their members on higher ground. Usually the starter pokemon was the most used one and therefore the one who gained most experience points, but AIs had enough sense and previous battles and not enough stacked items to know how the game went.

"Argh! I lost!" The NPC seemed unaffected by the scores or the levels of his own Pokemon, which had reached around 15 levels higher than they should've due to the constant training disguised as playtime back at their house. He glanced down at his now level-32 Ninetales and continued on his way.

The leveling was easy. He continued meeting characters and ignored the Pokemon center, buying nothing but two potions. Then he was blocked by the next town. It appeared that Touya hadn't arrived or met the requirements yet.

He hears a call from down the steps. He turns around to face the person.

"Hello," says Cheren, who is standing placidly at several paces away. "I'd like to ask if you're willing to engage in a Pokemon battle."

Touya stands behind him, solid and dispassionate. Bianca is filled with excitement as she glances between him and her friend. He takes one look at the three of them, checks to make sure his Ninetales is fine, and shakes his head.

"You three should battle each other. I'd rather not."

Cheren glances at the Ninetales and reassesses. "Alright-"

"I volunteer!" Bianca steps up determinedly, her Pokeball already in hand. Cheren reaches out. "Hey, wait-"

"Go, Oshawott!"

She jumps excitedly as her Pokemon tumbles out, readying itself before facing the massive Ninetales looming above it. It squeaks, but then meets its trainer's eyes and grounds itself. "Use Water Gun!"

Ninetales accepts the attack with a block of its tails. The water bounces off its thick coat and traipses off without any damage.

"Okay, Oshawott, now use Tackle!"

"Ninetales. Dodge."

It nimbly goes out of the way. The attack lands harmlessly onto the ground. He continues his line of fire. "Ice Beam."

Bianca gasps. "I-Ice Beam?!"

The blinding ray of ice hits Oshawott head-on, encasing it immediately with no intention of letting its opponent escape. Oshawott freezes, then falls to the ground. All three of them stare at the remnants of the attack dumbly before it cracks into pieces and Oshawott is then left at Bianca's feet, now unconscious. Her Pokeball instantly retrieves it.

"Wait. I thought that Ninetales was supposed to be a fire-type Pokemon. I've seen it on the television!" Bianca looks lost now, and tears begin forming on her face as she realizes how weak her Oshawott was to his ice-type attack and how cruel its defeat was.

"Alolan Ninetales," he responds. "Look at its fur. It's white, more so than a Ninetales from this region."

"Y-you didn't have to use Ice Beam!"

"It was the weakest attack I had. Furthermore, ice-type moves are weak against water-type Pokemon."

Cheren raised an eyebrow, clearly somewhat interested. "I've heard from several accounts that you've fought with them in a Pokemon battle or two before. I wasn't expecting this much of a difference between level."

"Yes." He checks on his Ninetales. "I think I have a revive I picked up somewhere. You can take it. I won't fight the rest of your Pokemon."

Bianca, who'd been assessing her own Pokemon as well, startled and laughed nervously.

Cheren blinked several times, realization dawning upon him as it caused his face to change color slightly. The other two still stared blankly at him, not responding to his words properly. "How did you fight Touya?"

"Huh?"

"You didn't fight him with Ninetales, right? I've never seen it out. From what I could see, Touya had challenged you outside in the forest."

"Ah." He scratched his head. "I didn't fight him with a Pokemon."

It took Cheren a second. He paled, then reddened, then turned white. "What?" Bianca asked in curiosity. "Then how do you fight Pokemon battles without a Pokemon?"

"You...fight them on your own? Without Pokemon? They could seriously injure you-"

"Why need a Pokemon to fight?"

Cheren was still trying to open and close his mouth. Bianca realized what was going on and appeared horrified. Touya...looked at him with the exact same expressionless glance. For the first time, he smiled.

"Touya! Are you serious? How come you never told us about this?"

The boy shrugged.

Cheren whirled back to their neighbor, who looked far too nonchalant for someone who basically just said the equivalent of attempting suicide. "You...! That is a really dangerous confession to make!"

"If you subject Pokemon to battle, then what different is it for a trainer to face the same conditions?"

"That's different-"

The man shook his head before stepping back, checking discreetly to make sure that the invisible barrier wouldn't stop him. It let him pass one foot through so he continued. "I can't fight stronger Pokemon, of course. I'm not jumping into fights. I have more than one weapon on my person, though, and if any of you need to spray a bad guy to run away or something then I have pepper spray."

The three of them face the man as he tosses what looks like a can of the same design as a medicine spray, nozzle cap closed shut so that nothing leaks. Cheren sniffs it and promptly furrows his brow.

"It's strong."

Touya glances at the bottle forlornly, as if he wants to touch it and also throw it away as fast as humanly possible before it entered his vicinity ever again.

"He sprayed your Snivy?"

Touya walked off.

* * *

thank you for reading whoops im trying to get something out of my keyboard

this is the umpteenth time i started writing a story with no plan on continuing it sorry! i'll get back to the other ones later if i can, i think i'm heading onto an animating phase so i'll come back for that one

see you guys later!


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